When I was sworn in to the Delaware Legislature, I took an oath to uphold the Constitution. Every legislator did.

I introduced Senate Bill 89, the American Laws for American Courts bill, as a safeguard to upholding the Constitution. It simply says that legal decisions should be made by laws and ideals outlined in the U.S. Constitution.

That’s it. There is no hate agenda here.

Some would try to characterize the bill as anti-Muslim. That is not true.

The United States is the longest-standing democracy in the world because of the unique values of liberty it represents. These values, such as freedom of religion, speech and press, due process, and the right to privacy, do not exist in all foreign legal systems.

Yet, foreign laws and legal doctrine principles are more and more finding their way into U.S. court cases. These foreign laws are frequently at odds with our principles of equal protection and due process.

We have seen the sovereignty of our Constitution questioned in recent years in cases before the United States Supreme Court, where some justices looked to international courts to interpret the U.S. Constitution. In the case of Roper v. Simmons, Justice Anthony Kennedy said he made his decision based on, “the overwhelming weight of international opinion.”

I tend to lean more toward former Justice Antonin Scalia’s opinion that those who make and interpret laws are responsible to the American electorate, while foreign judges have no such responsibility and “should not exercise significant power.” Justice Scalia saw American justices using foreign interpretations only when it suited their own opinions.

What could following foreign law mean for the American people? Well, what if the courts decided to follow along with the opinion made in 2003 in Sichuan Province saying male officials could not hire female assistants? What if they followed the French law, still on the books from 1959, that it is legal to marry a dead person?

On a more serious note, what about the decision that put a Greek man in jail, charged with blasphemy for a cartoon he posted mocking a Greek Orthodox monk?

These examples seem silly, but they illustrate the point that foreign judges and foreign courts do not necessarily follow the same guidelines or beliefs outlined in our Constitution.

American Laws for American Courts would simply be Delaware saying it will uphold our Constitution and our value system under that Constitution. No citizen or resident should be denied the guaranteed liberties, rights and freedoms outlined in our Constitution.

Those freedoms are being threatened in Delaware’s Legislative Hall right now.

I first introduced this bill in 2015. It never even made it out of committee. I reintroduced the bill last year, where it was released from committee in June. It was put on the ready list, and then actually made it on to the agenda for the Senate a few weeks ago, when it was pulled.

Sen. David McBride, the president pro tempore of the Senate, used his discretion to pull this bill because he said it was “anti-Muslim.” There was no discussion, no chance for question or explanation, no due process.

A bill with bipartisan support that should have been a pro-America and pro-Delaware bill, instead became a glaring example of all that is wrong in the Delaware Legislature right now.